#21: The PC Gets Its Redemption?

Top Story

The next Mortal Kombat 11 DLC seems to include Joker, Terminator and Ash

Mortal Kombat 11 is proving to be one of the most popular games in the long-running series, and players are anxiously awaiting the announcement and arrival of new characters. An eager fan has even delved deep into the latest patch – and seems to have found all of them, including a bunch of familiar faces!

User thethiny on Reddit posted a number of shots of a debugger showing memory content from the Mortal Kombat 11 executable running the latest patch, which list all the fighters – including several unannounced ones. The guest characters include The Terminator, Ash from Evil Dead, and Batman’s nemesis Joker (who also appeared in NetherRealm’s Injustice games). There are two returning Mortal Kombat characters too: Sheeva and Fujin.

Wait’ll they get a load of me

None of the new characters come as a huge surprise: Ash was hinted at during the Shang Tsung reveal trailer with a chainsaw sound, and that was followed by a snippet of music that sounded a lot like the classic Terminator theme tune. Another deep dive into the Switch version also revealed proof of Joker.

While Injustice: Gods Among Us and its sequel featured several Mortal Kombat characters, Joker is the first DC Comics character to cross over to NetherRealm’s own universe since the ill-fated Mortal Kombat VS DC Universe from 2008. Considering Joker’s obsession with murder and mayhem, he’ll fit right in.

Time For A Quick Daily Quiz?

Which of these Amiibo CAN be scanned in to create a retro character costume in Super Mario Maker?

• Ryu (from Street Fighter)
• Wolf Link (from Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)
• Roy (from Fire Emblem)
• Shovel Knight

The answer will be revealed at the end of this issue!

News Bits

River City Girls from WayForward coming September 5

WayForward – developers of classic old-school 2D games such as the Shantae series, DuckTales Remastered, and Double Dragon Neon – have released a seriously impressive trailer for River City Girls, a new arcade-style beat’em-up.

It’s based on the NES classic River City Ransom (known as Street Gangs in Europe), which is part of the long-running Kunio-Kun series – which even includes a bunch of dodgeball games! River City Girls will launch on Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on September 5th.

Stranger Things appearing in Fortnite

What other franchises will cross over into the Fortnite phenomenon after the arrival of John Wick and Thanos from Avengers: Infinity War? It looks like Stranger Things is next, since the Netflix series’ creepy portals are appearing all over the Mega Mall and character skins for Chief Hopper and the Demogorgon have leaked.

Stranger Things season 3 is arriving on Netflix today, so the timing is definitely spot-on. But will players be able to wield Eleven’s psychic powers?

Daily Fact

Super Mario Maker had over 150 secret characters, and some weren’t even from Nintendo games

As evidenced by today’s (and yesterday’s) quiz, we’re rather obsessed with the Mystery Mushroom item in Super Mario Maker. This fun item from Nintendo’s DIY Mario games for the Switch and Wii U allows players to turn Mario into one of over 150 different characters. 152 to be precise!

These characters are pulled from a range of franchises. Most of them can only be accessed by scanning in the 100-odd available Amiibo figures, but that doesn’t take away any of the fun of playing a 2D Mario game with characters from Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Earthbound, Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Animal Crossing, and even Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training.

What about non-Nintendo franchises? Sonic the Hedgehog appears, along with Pac-Man, Starfy, Bubbles from Clu Clu Land, Shaun the Sheep, Hello Kitty – even, bizarrely, a Mercedes Benz! It really makes you wonder why such a brilliant feature would be removed in Mario Maker 2…

Weekly Rumours

BigBen Accidentally Confirms Nintendo Switch Mini Design?

We’ve all heard so much about the Nintendo Switch Mini that it feels crazy that there still hasn’t been any official announcement! In this week’s rumour round-up, we take a look at the latest evidence of the Switch Mini’s imminent arrival.

There have been rumours about the Nintendo Switch Pro and Mini since the beginning of the year, and both have been expected to launch by the end of 2019 – but there hasn’t been any concrete proof until now: A silicon case design by BigBen, one of the largest protective case manufacturers in the UK, just leaked. This is similar to past leaks by mobile phone case manufacturer Spigen, which revealed the iPhone X before Apple did.

A shot of the packaging shows the silicon case is for the ‘Mini Switch 2’, suggesting that Nintendo is planning to number their revisions to avoid confusion. The silicon case doesn’t give evidence of any drastic design changes, but there is a chance the left Joy-Con could feature a proper D-pad this time, since the left side of the case features a round rather than cross-shaped hole. Let’s hope we receive official confirmation of the ‘Mini Switch 2’ soon – a lot of people are putting off their purchase in anticipation of new hardware!

Daily News

“Exciting new content” for Marvel’s Avengers being shown at Comic-Con

Ever since the epic (if divisive) reveal at Square Enix’s E3 press conference last month, fans have been clamoring for another – and hopefully better – look at Marvel’s Avengers. It looks like their wish is being granted, since Marvel Entertainment has confirmed that “exciting new content” will be shown at San Diego Comic-Con on July 18th

There will be a Marvel Games panel at the event, hosted by Greg Miller of KindaFunny and Marvel Games boss Bill Rosemann. We’ll see new stuff from Marvel’s Avengers, as well as the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (out this month for Switch), Iron Man VR (for PSVR) and… apparently some surprises!

I am Iron Man

According to Marvel’s website, there will be ‘many unannounced surprises and panel exclusives’ in addition to the three games already mentioned. Greg Miller tweeted that he would be showing off ‘secret stuff’ as well. Which seems like pretty strong evidence that there will be some new announcements. It could just be Spider-Man DLC, but hey, we’ll take that!

Marvel’s Avengers and Iron Man VR received a bit of criticism for their slightly bland character design, since they’re not based on the actors from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but fortunately Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 looks like pure, unadulterated comic book fun. It’s even got the X-Men in it!

Is Outset Island hiding in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild?

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild isn’t just one of the best games on Switch, it’s arguably the best game of this generation. In the huge, open world of Hyrule there are many secrets to be found, and not all have been uncovered – and a new discovery hiding in Lurelin Village has caught the internet by surprise.

Lurelin Village is located in the Faron region, south-east of Hyrule, just east of Tuft Mountain. If you check the map, there’s a an area where the seas go inland at the end of a road, which is where Lurelin Village is located. And until now, it didn’t really seem to serve much purpose. Yes, there’s a few side quests here, but otherwise you can safely miss it. But could Lurelin actually be an important location in Zelda lore?

Aryll’s Lookout

GameXplain made a discovery while exploring Lurelin Village – it looks incredibly like Outset Island, the starting location in Wind Waker. The buildings, the mountains, the trees, the jetty leading into the sea, the tower nicknamed ‘Aryll’s Lookout’ – it’s all very similar and laid out almost identically to Outset! The buildings and people even have the stylized ‘wind’ symbol from Wind Waker on them.

Coincidence? Unlikely. Other classic Zelda locations are already in Breath of the Wild – such as Ocarina of Time’s Lon Lon Ranch – and Wind Waker is set during a different time period, after an apocalyptic flood. Which leads us to wonder – are there other classic Zelda locations hidden in plain sight in Breath of the Wild? We wouldn’t put it past Nintendo…

News Bits

Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC leaked by Rockstar’s own website

Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the best console-exclusive games around (even if it’s slightly too long, it took us ages even when we ignored the giant open world!) and everyone knows it’s coming to PC – it just hasn’t been announced yet. Now JakoMako51 on Twitter has spotted that Rockstar’s Social Club page actually has a listing for “RDR2_PC_Accomplishments” in its source code – next to PlayStation 4 trophies. Which means Rockstar’s own website just leaked the existence of the PC version of Red Dead 2. Thanks Rockstar! Can we have a proper announcement now?

Quiz Answer - Did You Get It Right?

Which of these Amiibo CAN be scanned in to create an 8-bit character costume in Super Mario Maker?

Answer: Wolf Link!

Yes, we’re bringing it up again! One of the coolest features of Super Mario Maker is the Mystery Mushroom, which is essentially an ability to turn 8-bit Mario into other classic characters from a range of different games – some of which are not even Nintendo games! The simplest way to get some of these characters is to scan an Amiibo, and a Mystery Mushroom will appear, ready to turn Mario into that character!

Almost every one of the many, many Amiibo figures out there (see the Daily Fact!) can be scanned into Super Mario Maker – and other than Mii fighters, we actually listed the entire selection of Amiibo that CAN’T be scanned:Street Fighter’s Ryu, Shovel Knight, and Roy from Fire Emblem (odd considering every other Fire Emblem character works). Wolf Link from Twilight Princess can be scanned though, and even features Midna riding on his back!

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